From Battle to Battle

Diaz-Canel continues to talk about the economy using bellicose language (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 18 December 2018 – Miguel Diaz-Canel has assured the National Assembly that “the fundamental battle of Cuba is the economic one.” A phrase that draws on that hackneyed military metaphor that has been abused so much in the Cuban official discourse of the last 60 years. His words are part of a strategy to address every aspect of reality as a struggle, a confrontation and an eternal contest, whether against the political enemy, a hurricane or, in this case, the economy.

What would happen if, instead of “playing the bully” all the time, Cuban officials saw production, the market and entrepreneurship as allies they could help, encourage and promote? What would we notice in our lives if they put aside the “weapons” of restrictions, abandoned the “trenches” of so many bureaucratic absurdities, and raised the “white flag,” publicly acknowledging that this system does not work?

The only war that is worth fighting in this case is the one that ends with the unconditional surrender of so many failed management methods that have led this Island to permanent bankruptcy, financial beggary and the mass escape of our children in search of horizons of prosperity in other latitudes. It is time to decree an economic “armistice,” a daily peace that allows us to find bread, travel in a train car, or access a newspaper – one that does not repeat slogans – to set aside this permanent fight, a bitter and exhausting contest.

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